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Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

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Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#161

Post by aspenmayer »

bawolff wrote: post #135
fishmicrowaver wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah check out the Talk archives for the Human Anus page. It's like 20 years of hole fetishists and people trying to upload their own.

I always found the warning text for people who upload dick pics pretty amusing https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Nopenis

Is there some kind of automated NSFW/nudity detector that runs against Wikipedia/Wikimedia uploads? One would think there would be at their scale, I just don’t actually know. I saw your user page the other day while looking at a proposal to have a .onion URL for Wikipedia, and I thought that I’d seen you around here, and figure you’re as good a person as any to ask.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#162

Post by adzm »

noman-land wrote: post #145
stopthebullshit wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Got any notable examples? All the history is publc so it should be easy to link to, presumably.

People say this about political topics on Wikipedia often but rarely if ever provide examples.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#163

Post by Izkata »

alpaca128 wrote: post #93
IAmBroom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clever. I had to read that repeatedly to get it. Cf: The difference between theory and practice is: "Practice works, in theory."

I heard it as "in theory, theory and practice are the same"

I've heard that style too, with the addendum "in practice, not".

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#164

Post by alex1138 »

I can't defend Wiki any further after their politicization

How about not calling Peter McCullough or Ryan Cole or Pierre Kory misinformation spreaders about covid when they were right the whole time

Larry Sanger was correct

Edit: (I know we're not supposed to comment on downvotes but I seriously don't care) Those of you who insta-downvote stuff like this should not enjoy the privileges of the karma system on HN that allows you to downvote

(Further - how many of you actually work for big tech? Do you think it's ok to censor doctors like has been going on the last few years? Do you have any qualities of personal reflection, whatsoever?)

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#165

Post by adonovan »

bawolff wrote: post #12

There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet. And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things. But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws. The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work i…

Agreed. It's funny how only a couple of years ago we all told schoolchildren "stop citing Wikipedia, anyone can edit it, read an actual book!" yet now in this benighted era of AI we urge them to consult Wikipedia for "the truth" because it's not the hallucination of a machine.

Yes, it has its flaws, but I plan to keep on editing and donating.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#166

Post by ironSkillet »

postmodern100 wrote: post #128
estimator7292 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is very little about the universe that is axiomatically true and correct in and of itself. Math is about the only thing I can think of, and really that's in a different category. Everything we know as a species is really just consensus . "Truth" is what we agree it is because the universe does not offer actual truth. What we know is the best guess that our greatest minds can agree on. What we consider to be tru…

> There is very little about the universe that is axiomatically true and correct in and of itself. Math is about the only thing I can think of, and really that's in a different category. My thought is that math (broadly speaking) possesses correctness because of axiomatic decisions. The consequences of those decisions lead us to practice math that can't express everything that we can imagine (e.g., see axiom of choic…

It seems like there is a universal sense in which statements like 1+1=2" or "7 is a prime number" are true, no?

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#167

Post by hoshi73 »

Many call Wikipedia "the last good place on the internet", but that's really only true of the English edition. Non-English versions are generally filled with political misinformation and propaganda from people trying to politicize a nation's history, which, frankly, makes them not worth bothering with:

https://slate.com/technology/2021/03/japanese-wikipedia-misi...

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#168

Post by card_zero »

ironSkillet wrote: post #166
postmodern100 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is very little about the universe that is axiomatically true and correct in and of itself. Math is about the only thing I can think of, and really that's in a different category. My thought is that math (broadly speaking) possesses correctness because of axiomatic decisions. The consequences of those decisions lead us to practice math that can't express everything that we can imagine (e.g., see axiom of choic…

It seems like there is a universal sense in which statements like 1+1=2" or "7 is a prime number" are true, no?

Mathematics does its best, but it's still a language, and fallible. It's trying to explain things, and the concepts like "prime number" and "one" can be shaken by later improvements to understanding.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#169

Post by jfengel »

I was surprised that Wikipedia wasn't immediately overrun by trolls, griefers, and spammers. I'm still not entirely sure how it avoids that, though I've got some speculations.

Unlike most user contributed sites it's happy to throw stuff away. It does grow but it doesn't care about growing fast. That's great but it's a hard formula to replicate.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#170

Post by intermerda »

alex1138 wrote: post #164

I can't defend Wiki any further after their politicization How about not calling Peter McCullough or Ryan Cole or Pierre Kory misinformation spreaders about covid when they were right the whole time Larry Sanger was correct Edit: (I know we're not supposed to comment on downvotes but I seriously don't care) Those of you who insta-downvote stuff like this should not enjoy the privileges of the karma system on HN that…

> How about not calling Peter McCullough or Ryan Cole or Pierre Kory misinformation spreaders about covid when they were right the whole time

What were they right about? I'm looking at Peter McCullough's Wikipedia article and some of the things he's claimed include young people don't need the vaccine, there is no evidence of asymptomatic spread of COVID-19, and COVID-19 pandemic was planned, etc.

Is this what you're saying they were right about the whole time? The pandemic was planned?

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